If you meet any mathematicians this week, please be extra nice to them as they're going to be a little bit teary. On Saturday night, Martin Gardner died.
There are very few mathematicians who wouldn't cite Gardner as an influence while they were growing up. He certainly lived a long and rewarding life. In fact he was so old his age was the largest number with only two factors, where the two numbers below it also have only two factors each.
Some people reading this are now trying to work out how old he must have been. If you're not one of them, you won't mind me spoiling it by revealing that he was 95. He spent 95 years coming up with interesting puzzles and fascinating pieces of mathematics. Like a forerunner to sudoku, Gardner spent 25 years writing a weekly column about maths puzzles for Scientific American. This is as well as authoring over 70 books. It was actually an old copy of his second book, Mathematics, Magic and Mystery, that first got me interested in mathematical magic tricks. Most mathematicians over the past half a century would have a similar story.
Interestingly though, Gardner was not a mathematician himself. When he started working for Scientific American in 1956 he hadn't done any maths beyond the normal high school classes. He was purely a populariser of what became known as Recreational Mathematics.
It was his lack of mathematical training that allowed him to write in such an accessible manner. He wrote for people who were not mathematicians. He wrote for people who enjoyed puzzles and, more generally, simply enjoyed thinking. Mathematics is much bigger than the (often tedious) bits that are taught at school and Gardner wrote about all the interesting bits from the edges of mathematics. Strange flexagons that fold to reveal different sides, tiling patterns that never repeat and bizarre logical paradoxes. He proved that you don't need to be a mathematician to enjoy mathematics.
He tapped into the "lay nerd" population of people who liked to think through a puzzle. People who enjoyed the thrill of solving something difficult; just like the thousands of mathsgasms everyday from people completing a hard sudoko on the way to work. But he showed that there is more than just lining up numbers in a grid (even though he did plenty of that too). There are strange shapes and clever logical puzzles. He also delved into all sorts of other areas.
As an amateur magician, Gardner was constantly sharing new ingenious tricks. As a skeptical mind, he was constantly questioning pseudoscience and exposing illogical ideas. Gardner even wrote about literature: he was a leading expect on Lewis Carroll. He wrote about whatever people would find intellectually interesting.
My friend Colin Wright actually had the good fortune to meet Gardner only two months ago. Even though Martin had some difficulty getting in and out of his chair, Colin was impressed at how mentally active he was at 95 years of age: "The fact that his abilities seemed undiminished was wonderful, and I was looking forward to seeing his new puzzles". At nearly a century in age - and after 54 years writing about maths - Martin Gardner still enjoyed the delight of a new puzzle to solve or conundrum to figure out. Mathematics for its own fun sake.
So in fact, if you see a scientist, magician, mathematician or indeed anyone who enjoys a bit of mental stimulation (be it sudoko or something more) please be nice to them as they mourn. Maybe even build them a flexagon.
Matt Parker is based in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London. His favourite number is either 220 or 284. Why?
